Rain Man and Rising Autism Diagnoses: A History of Awareness

The People's Court.

In 1988, the movie Rain Man would be the first to

finally introduce the general

public to the word autism.

So this is the case.

What, is he crazy?

No.

Is he retarded?

Not exactly.

He's not crazy, he's not retarded, but he's here.

Well, he's an autistic savant.

I don't know what that means.

Well, some people like him used to be called

idiot savants.

They have certain deficiencies, certain abilities.

Yeah, but he's retarded.

Autistic. People were hearing the word autism for the first

time and struggling to

understand what it meant.

Even though a child psychologist by the name of Leo Kanner had discovered autism

almost five decades earlier, it would remain so rare through this

entire

period that it was simply never talked about.

But that was about to change very quickly

when thousands of families' lives were soon to be turned upside down.

To end our week of autism coverage, we're going to tell you about one group of

very

young children being classified on the autism spectrum at what some say is

an alarming rate.

By the end of this newscast, one more person will be diagnosed with

autism.

The numbers are going up so quickly, something has to be done.

The numbers are staggering, and there's so much fear about autism.

There's so much misinformation about autism.

The autism epidemic is on the brink of entering a brand new

chapter.

These numbers represent s- staggering 57% increase.

That is more new pediatric cases-

Yes

... than AIDS, diabetes, and cancer combined.

Combined, for pediatric cases.

We need this entire globe to come in and find the cure because this is a

global epidemic.

New numbers from the CDC showing one child in 68

has autism.

That means about one million children in the United States are now

diagnosed with autism.